Mercury Rising
in Watch the Mercury Rising Mercury Rising is the 1998 movie that was the genesis of Mercury Rising: The Series, and is an action thriller film, starring Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Miko Hughes, Chi McBride, and Kim Dickens. It was directed by Harold Becker and produced by Brian Grazer. Plot Summary It was thought to be impenetrable. Indecipherable by any computer on Earth. MERCURY was the ultimate super-code, until it was deciphered - by a nine year-old autistic savant named Simon Lynch. He can read it easier than others read the English language. Simon is now deemed a threat by the NSA's Lt. Colonel Nicholas Kudrow, who sends out hit-men to eliminate him. However, Simon has some luck on his side, as FBI Special Agent Art Jeffries befriends the boy and defends him from Kudrow's hit-men. Now, Kudrow and his men will have to go through Jeffries if they want Simon, something that by far will not be easy for them to accomplish... Plot The movie opens to the rural town of Sturgis, South Dakota, where a hostage crisis is being played out at a bank near the center of town. Anti-government radical Edgar Halstrom (Richard Riehle) and his militia group have seized the bank in defiance of the federal government and the FBI has surrounded the building, ready to storm it practically on a hair trigger. Working within the bank and Halstrom's group, FBI Special Agent Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis) manages to convince Halstrom through his son James (Chad Lindberg) to surrender, and is within seconds of doing so when the SWAT team storms the building and kills everyone but the hostages and Jeffries - James then dies in his arms. Furious, Jeffries stalks outside and roughs up the operational supervisor & SAC John Hartley (John Doman) before punching him with a bloody fist and spitting at his feet. In Chicago about a week later, at the city's neuropsychiatric learning center, Dr. Samantha London (Camryn Manheim) presents autistic nine year-old Simon Lynch (Miko Hughes) with a puzzle magazine, something he likes and knows is "...very, very special." Meanwhile, Jeffries has arrived back at the city field office and is quick to be reprimanded by his boss and local SAC Joe Lomax (Kevin Conway), who reassigns him to menial stakeouts with rookies and public relations work even after arguing with Jeffries' best friend and A-SAC Tommy Jordan (Chi McBride), something Jeffries greatly laments and despises after 14 years of back-breaking undercover work. Simon is now at home with his mother Jenny (Kelly Hazen) and has begun to work on the puzzle magazine Dr. London gave him earlier. He opens it to Page 99 to find a puzzle the likes of which he has never before seen and triggers a primal ability, buried within his mind and one that unravels the gibberish of symbols on the page into a phone number, which he proceeds to call. This number leads to the 'Puzzle Center' at NSA's Division, watched over by analysts Leo Pedranski (Bodhi Pine Elfman) and Dean Crandell (Robert Stanton). Pedranski is on duty when the call comes through and Simon tells him that he solved Puzzle Ninety-Nine, which contains a top-secret communications code named MERCURY - something no one was ever supposed to know. Pedranski panics and informs Crandell, who insists on informing their boss, Lt. Colonel Nicholas Kudrow (Alec Baldwin) of the 'security breach'. At a briefing in Bangkok when the message arrives, Kudrow immediately prepares to leave and return to the US. At the same time, back in Chicago, Simon's father Martin (John Carroll Lynch) returns from work and rocks Simon to sleep in the boy's favorite rocking chair. Martin then lays his son to sleep, not knowing that this is the last time he will do so. Kudrow soon arrives back at Division, his attitude grim and cold. He calls a meeting with Pedranski and Crandell, who learn of the true nature of their mystery caller from him as he explains his point of view, believing Simon's condition to be one of 'diminished capacity'. This is quickly explained to Kudrow by Crandell as Simon being a savant and that he "...just saw it code." Kudrow then proceeds to intimidate the analysts into believing his point of view that Simon's unique ability was more of a liability and didn't solve the potential for a security breach to a foreign government which he now believes all too likely. He then orders them to erase the recording of Pedranski's conversation with the boy and that Simon himself be eliminated to seal the impending security leak. The next day, (June 7) Kudrow's assassin Peter Burrell (L.L. Ginter) arrives at the Lynch home posing as a Chicago Police detective and kills both Martin and Jenny with single shots each from a silenced Walther PPK before searching for his real target: Simon. Burrell fails to find the boy, and frustrated, flees at the sound of approaching emergency sirens prompted by Martin's last-breath attempt to call 911, but not before placing the gun in Martin's hand (silencer removed), setting it up to look like a murder-suicide. Now resigned to his new position, Jeffries is staked out with a junior agent listening in on bettors placing stakes on an upcoming Cubs game. Jeffries soon receives a phone call from Tommy, informing him of the Lynch murder-suicide and that Lomax is ordering him to investigate "...a possible missing child". He arrives at the Lynch home an hour or so later to find Chicago PD swarming around the house, news-channel crews, and a huge crowd of neighbors across the street gawking, not used to this type of attention in the usually quiet suburb. Jeffries enters to find an old friend, CPD Detective Jack Nichols (Jack Conley) in charge of the crime scene, kneeling over Martin Lynch's prostrate body as forensics photographs it. The two briefly enter the kitchen, also filled with investigators, to look over Jenny Lynch's body, Jeffries observing the scene. Nichols finally informs him about the kid, (Simon) remarking, "Neighbors say he's retarded," to which Jeffries grimly replies "Guys that kill their families kill all of them." Nichols reaffirms what he thinks to be the obvious - a murder-suicide - remarking that the working-class Martin may have killed Simon somewhere else and that he simply tired of caring for his handicapped son, but Jeffries quickly dispels this with a simple remark of "How's a guy that's so broke afford a $1500 handgun?" Borrowing Nichols' cell phone, Jeffries heads upstairs to look around for himself and enters Simon's room, briefly sifting through the boy's backpack before using the borrowed phone to call Lomax. Before he even finishes entering the number, Jeffries hears an odd noise accompanying the dial tone, and puzzled, peers around the room and behind the toppled bed mattress, looking for the source. Jeffries continues dialing random digits until finally locating the source - the closet - where he locates and opens a previously hidden crawl space in the side wall, a petrified and confused Simon inside. After a failed attempt to coax the terrified boy out, Jeffries gently removes Simon, who proceeds to flail and scream, and in trying to calm him, Jeffries awkwardly and quickly lowers the whimpering boy back to the floor. At this point, Nichols rushes up the stairs and into the room to investigate the commotion and astonished, he first looks to Simon and then to Jeffries, who, tossing the usused phone back, tells him to call for an ambulance from the nearby Concordia Hospital as well as a police guard for Simon, wanting him protected. Throughout the whole exchange, Simon nervously plays with his Connect Four set. A short time later, now in an ambulance en-route to Concordia, a flailing and yelling Simon struggles against a medic attempting to restrain the boy on his gurney. Jeffries stops the medic and partly unstraps Simon, who cries out "Mommy, Daddy!" multiple times, to which Jeffries orders the siren off. He then takes Simon's cards in hand and tries to be friendly with him, telling the frightened boy that he is a friend too, at which point Simon knocks the cards away and screams "Art is a stranger!" almost vehemently. Later, at the hospital, Jeffries watches as a nurse sedates the still-nervous Simon and inquires of her, asking why she only gave him a shot. To this, the nurse explains autism to him, that Simon "...has trouble with feelings and emotions - so he gets very frightened and confused." Dumbfounded, and told that he wouldn't be able to question Simon as a result of the boy's handicap, Jeffries leaves the isolation wing, and on his way out, passes a CPD officer assigned to watch over the boy. (Note: This plot review is incomplete as of - 9:48 PM EST, November 26, 2011) Cast *Bruce Willis as Art Jeffries *Alec Baldwin as Nicholas Kudrow *Miko Hughes as Simon Lynch *Chi McBride as Tommy Jordan *Kim Dickens as Stacey Siebring *John Carroll Lynch as Martin Lynch *Kelly Hazen as Jenny Lynch *Bodhi Elfman as Leo Pedranski *Robert Stanton as Dean Crandell *Kevin Conway as Joe Lomax *Carrie Preston as Emily Lang *L.L. Ginter as Peter Burrell Memorable Quotes * Simon (repeated line) - "Art is a stranger!" While driving through DC. * Leo - "Why are we doing this, Dean? Why does he want to see us way out there?! We - We didn't do anything wrong, right?" * Dean - "Should I turn around?" * Leo - "No. He'd kill us." * Dean - "Well, he might kill us anyway." * Leo - "You being serious?!" * Dean - "Relax, Leo. Please." In the coffee shop, after Jeffries leaves. * Stacey - "Would have done it without the flattery." Trivia * The book Simple Simon by Ryne Douglas Pearson served as the basis for Mercury Rising, and despite several story elements differing between the two, the movie still retained the core details that make it highly reputable by the few loyal fans it has made over the years since it's premiere in April 1998. * Despite making less than $100 million at the box office worldwide http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120749/ (only $32 million in the United States)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Rising, it still retains a following of fans over the years, even to this day. * The film was released on Blu-ray on September 14, 2010http://www.movieweb.com/news/unleashed-and-mercury-rising-debut-on-blu-ray-on-september-14th, more than twelve years after the theatrical release. * At least three drafts of the film were made in 1996 alone, all titled Simple Simon, after the book. These seem to blend the book's plot with that of the final movie, with characters such as Art Jefferson, Mike Fiorello, Bizzi Jordan, Dean Andrews, and Stacia Sebring present. See Also * Mercury Rising Photo Gallery References Category:Mercury Rising Continuity Category:Movies Category:Real World